The crazy stuff that is going on over on the other side of the Atlantic has made one thing clear: Too many people (and businesses), me included, are way too dependent on US big tech companies.
Switching away from tools you depended on for years can be hard though. And while I think it would theoretically be possible to completely ditch all US tech, I don’t think it’s a pragmatic solution. Case in point, I’m writing these words on my MacBook Air which I would re-buy in a heartbeat – it’s fantastic.
But perfect is the enemy of good and achieving more digital sovereignty is possible through little steps too.
Since my Dropbox subscription is about to renew, I started to look for a new solution for my cloud needs. I briefly considered buying a NAS and hosting everything myself, but at least for now, I postponed that project.
One reason is that I found a very feasible Dropbox replacement: It’s called kDrive by a Swiss company called “Infomaniak”.
I already use one product from them, namely their email service, for my personal domain and am very happy so far.
I don’t know how well-known Infomaniak is abroad. In my view, Proton usually comes top of mind when people think of a Swiss company that provides alternatives to US big tech products. But since this topic of digital sovereignty has entered the mainstream discourse here in Switzerland, ads for Infomaniak are everywhere.
They brand themselves as “the ethical cloud”, and from what I can tell, they deliver well on that.
For example, they offset 200% of their CO2, try to extend the lifespan of their servers for as long as possible, encourage the use of public transport for their employees with bonuses and so on.
Another cool fact about their data centers is that they use the thermal energy generated by their servers to heat up to 6,000 households in the proximity of the facility.
So from an ethical standpoint, Infomaniak seems like a vastly superior company compared to many other cloud providers.
I’m sure a Dropbox pro user will find features that Infomaniak’s kSuite doesn’t support, but based on my needs, I don’t know what more I could wish for. They even offer a one click migration from Dropbox to their cloud which makes switching over a breeze.
Another nice benefit of this switch is that the pricing is way better: Dropbox costs roughly 110 Swiss Francs per year and offers 2 TB of storage. kSuite costs way less (CHF 60/year) and even provides 3 TB of storage.
All in all a no-brainer in my book: Supporting a local company that offers a better service at a lower price point and seems to have the right moral standards.
This sounds like an ad but really isn’t: If you’re on the lookout for a new personal cloud, email server or web hosting, check out Infomaniak – they might help you gain a little digital sovereignty back!